Or should I say behind the casks? While I was in Guatemala, we made a very important stop at the aging facility. Beside being super-informative, I was impressed with their transparency and openness about every detail of creating Zacapa. I never once heard the renowned “proprietary info” spiel. And I can [...]

Or should I say behind the casks? While I was in Guatemala, we made a very important stop at the aging facility. Beside being super-informative, I was impressed with their transparency and openness about every detail of creating Zacapa. I never once heard the renowned “proprietary info” spiel. And I can now say to anyone that doubts the intricacy of their sistema solera, I saw all the barrels myself and it’s the real deal! Sistema Solera is a 500-plus year old system of aging (orginally used for sherries) the involves the blending of different ages and profiles into barrels that are continually aged, then evaluated, blended and so on until they are deemed ready for consumption by the Master Blender, in this case Lorena Vasquez. For Zacapa 23, they use a blend of rum aged 6 to 23 years, which have been aged in a course of 4 barrels. They start off in bourbon barrels, then its on to charred white oak, sherry and final Pedro Ximinez. The Zacapa XO gets and 5th step in French oak cognac barrels. After the rum is deemed ready by Lorena, the barrels are married in massive oak casks. There the rum stays for at least six month, while they slowly add water to get it down to the ABV it will retail at, and letting the contents of the different barrels seep together and mix into what becomes Zacapa 23!

We got a great look at the charring process for the barrels. While most of the charring is done by machine, they char by hand to test out different levels in order to set the machine. I got to sniff a freshly charred barrel, and recognized the smoke and toffee hints I tasted in the rum. Lorena explained to use that the alligator-skin type cracking in a barrel that has been heavily charred is very important because its lets the rum really seep in and absorb the flavors in the wood.

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